Profiteers Strike Again

Chilling Evidence

It seems like Trader Joe’s has become just another poker chip in the Wall Street casino. Whoever holds the chip at the moment has been making the usual cost saving reductions in quality and this time it was the ice cream.

Hardboiled investigative journalist

When the Trader Joe’s French Vanilla ice cream in my old refrigerator stopped being solid and began to stick to the spoon like never before, I thought it was the fault of the freezer.

Investigator-mobile

I got a new refrigerator and TJ’s ice cream still served up gooey and spoon sticky.

Maybe the new fridge was just not set cold enough. 

My blood ran cold at the thought that it might be the ice cream itself.

Was it just another in a recent series of quality reductions at Trader Joe’s?

Real tomato

The last time I got Trader Joe’s Australian Angus grass fed beef patties, I noticed they were loaded with grease and didn’t taste particularly good.

The Penne Pasta and Parmesan Chicken with broccoli in the refrigerated prepared dinners section no longer has broccoli in it.

So I looked at the ingredient list on the ice cream and discovered why it behaved like window caulking compound; They have added guar gum.

Nearly ripe tomato

This means they took out whatever real food ingredient was in there that held the ice cream together. 

I guess it will make the profit margin look good so the next player will buy the Trader Joe’s chip. These ruthless gamblers are called venture capitalists. Mitt Romney is one of them with his company Bain Capital.

The corporation holding the TJ's chip will keep cutting ingredients and inventory until Trader Joe's goes bankrupt. The stock market gamblers will make money off of that deal, too.

Ahead by a nose

In the meantime, we will have lost another source of quality groceries, and I will need to start making my own ice cream.

Other brands of ice cream, including Alden’s Organic vanilla, contain a variety of gums, cellulose, and other non food items. Cellulose is a catchall term for sawdust or ground cardboard.

Green leaves at sundown

I don’t mind the challenge. There are several ways to make ice cream. The plastic bag in a bag shake it method, folding sweetened milk and vanilla into whipped cream and freezing it, or for $15 - $400 one can use a good old hand crank or electric motor ice cream maker.

It will be the perfect compliment to my homemade apple pies.

Today’s Video;

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